DE LAVEAGA DELL IN Golden Gate Park was empty at dusk on the last Sunday of September. Two hundred volunteers had been there earlier in the day, weeding, clearing dead wood, and digging out brambles. Before leaving, they planted a dozen redwood saplings and placed an engraved bronze plaque at the base of each one.
Herb reached the dell as the sun was setting. He sat down by a plaque that read, “Kevin Bartholomew Memorial Tree.” Five minutes later, Gwen joined him.
“I brought tools,” she said and handed him a trowel from her bag.
They dug holes at the four cardinal points surrounding the slender trunk, taking care to shape curved, perpendicular walls, a trowel-length deep. When Herb finished, he leaned back on his elbows. In the distance, he recognized Katherine. He had met her at the wake after Kevin’s funeral. She was wearing a sleeveless summer dress. Her long auburn hair was lifted by a sea breeze. The pale freckles on her neck were just like Kevin’s.
“There she is,” he said.
Gwen jumped up and shouted, “Here we are.”
The two women waved excitedly then stopped, simultaneously aware that gravitas was more appropriate at this moment. Both bit their lips to keep from laughing. They stared at each other in wonder over the identical sequence of their reactions. They had already spent hours talking since Katherine flew in from Boston. Gwen now felt she could tell her anything. The self-restraint she occasionally needed to exert with Nan and Rick, even with Kevin when he was alive, was unnecessary. Katherine had become the sister she never had.
After hugs, Katherine reached into her purse for a plastic bag. She emptied tiny portions of Kevin’s ashes into each of the four holes. Gwen and Herb backfilled their excavations with loose earth and tamped it firm.
Katherine poured the remaining ashes into the trowels which Herb and Gwen held skyward. Another sea breeze arrived. They all watched as black swirls rose and disappeared into the twilight.